This Week

This week in politics:
I have singlehandedly come up with a way to inject a much-needed cash boost into the public health system! I am so good for society. Here it is: let's videotape operations and give patients the option to purchase a copy of the tape afterwards! Not only would it bea useful training tool for the surgeons (perhaps operations are already recorded, for this purpose?) but it would add a completely new revenue stream. Imagine! For Christmas, you can give Grandpa a DVD of his bypass! Only he doesn't know how to work the DVD player.


This week in death:
Based on the content of the notices published in the paper this week, there is a decided trend towards cremations rather than burials (or, as we in the trade call them, interments). In fact #cremation is the top trending topic on FunTwit (it is like Twitter for funeral directors), ahead of #embalm, #toofatforcasket and #deadgirlscantsayno.

This week in music:
I went to see a Joy Division covers band project, Permanence, at the Wunderbar in Lyttelton last night. I love the Wunderbar, even though it makes me adopt a Germanic accent and twirl an imaginary mustache. (Man I wish I had an actual mustache. I would wax it.) We sat at a table which had a lampshade made entirely of doll heads glued together. I thought it was awesome, but opinion was divided as some people found the way the light shone out of the dead doll eyes a little disconcerting. I was there as a guest of the lead singer, who I call the Little Lion because he has a rather leonine mane of hair (and because he is smaller than a real lion.) This allowed me to say "I'm with the band," (I love saying this) and drink their bar tab. The band was good,and I made friends with LL's friends, who were a physicist, a philosopher and a mathematician. I think. They were surprisingly entertaining. I think. One of them - either the physicist or the mathematician - is tall and very thin, and wears a trench coat and a fedora; he gives off anti-Ally vibes but perhaps it is all in my mind. Or else he has sensed that I have a deeply unmathematical soul. The other mathecist (compound word) surprised me by singlehandedlycarrying a large amp up two flights of stairs in a decidedly un-geeky manner, and by using 'collate' in a conversation about dinner - "Let's collate the chips," he said, and shoved them all to one side of the newspaper. The philosopher was a tiny, whippet-thin and very well-dressed girl called Tree ("as in the foliage?" "Yep") who turned out to be far nicer than I expect the beautiful people to be, and also not of a hugely mathematical bent, which was great because the boys kept talking about oscillators and I became confused. She has invited me to her soiree (her term, not mine) next weekend. I am to wear a dress and drink cocktails. I am always faintly suspiciouswhen people invite me to things - why are you doing this, I am not really very friendly, do you just want to learn some facts about ants? - but it should be a nice evening. Puttin on the Ritz etc. Now I want a cracker.

It was a fun night, except that now I keep getting Joy Division songs stuck in my head. Fuck you, Little Lion. Fuck you.